Exhibition · fluid dynamics · PDE
Vorticity Sea
What does a field do when it transports the very quantity that determines its own motion?
The flow carries the structure that drives the flow.
A periodic two-dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes field evolves in vorticity form. Velocity is recovered from vorticity through a Fourier-space Poisson solve; that velocity advects the vorticity while viscosity diffuses it.
Everyday analogy. Ink can be carried by water. Here the colored quantity is vorticity, and that vorticity also determines the velocity field that carries it. The transported structure participates in generating its own transport.
Pre-rendered from a deterministic 2-D incompressible Navier–Stokes solve in vorticity form using Fourier pseudospectral Poisson/derivative operations, 2/3 de-aliasing, viscosity, and explicit midpoint/RK2 integration. The public page contains no runtime or interactive execution.